


You can't choose what stays and what fades away

by Captain_Aurinko



Series: superpowers au [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Background Benzaiten Steel, Background Sarah Steel, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Juno Steel Character Study, Juno Steel Needs a Hug, Juno has power cancellation, M/M, Peter is a shapeshifter, canon-typical childhood trauma, oldtown teens, super hero AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23668381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Aurinko/pseuds/Captain_Aurinko
Summary: Peter looks into Juno's past between Murderous Mask and Midnight Fox.Except, this time, Juno has superpowers.Peter wants to know why no one else seems to know.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: superpowers au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1673617
Comments: 50
Kudos: 199





	You can't choose what stays and what fades away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aesphantasmal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesphantasmal/gifts).



After Peter had been arrested by Juno, escaped, and lost anyone who might’ve been tailing him, he spent two hours in front of the hotel mirror, changing between every face he could imagine, double and triple checking that his powers were intact. Once he was satisfied that Juno had been right about the power loss being temporary, he turned his mind to Juno himself. 

Peter was at his best when he had time to research things ahead of time. Take the Kanagawa’s security for instance: a lesser thief wouldn’t have made it through the front door without the motion sensors picking them up and broadcasting the break-in live on 122 different channels. Say goodbye to anonymity. There would be merchandise made of his face to be sold within the hour. But Peter Nureyev was no common cat-burglar; he had spent weeks learning the house’s layout, the cameras’ lines of sight, secret passages, guard rotations, the families’ sleeping patterns, and half a dozen other factors that would facilitate a clean escape if necessary. So when Croesus came along on the night of the break-in, Peter was more than ready to disappear. As much as Peter prepares, there’s only so much he can do before chance takes over. 

Peter spent the next 16 hours creating an alias, getting that alias into Dark Matters, and finally getting that alias assigned to the Kanagawa’s case. All of that was to say that it was hardly Peter’s fault that he hadn’t had time to look into Juno Steel. He was a private detective in a run-down office in the wrong part of town. Peter could make his guesses about the man’s character. 

Of course, every guess had been proven wrong as soon as he’d opened the door to Juno’s office. 

Peter sent the mask to his employer, assured her that he was beginning his research on the DiMaggio pill, and settled in for a long night of research on one Juno Steel.

The first layer of information he dug through was the news articles: mentions of Juno in connection with famous faces and thrilling escapes, and a few blurry photos of him as he tried to get away from the photographer. There were a few other articles that didn’t show Juno in such a heroic light. A couple of obituaries for a brother and mother, and a few mentions of her arrest and trial. A brief story about a missing little girl last seen by her sister (who had gone unnamed in the article for some reason) and two friends, Juno Steel and Micholas Mercury. A baffling news bulletin about a teenage Juno and his friends releasing some horrifying animal or other from the zoo. A slew of news articles about some fiasco on a case that had Juno leaving the HCPD shortly after. There were no mentions of his power.

Peter dug deeper, hacking, with some trial and error, into the HCPD’s records on Juno. They were much more extensive, but in a frustrating disarray that pointed to police corruption and file tampering. There were a few links to cases that Juno had filed and reports Juno had filled, but the majority of his work from the force had mysteriously disappeared. There were a few mentions of his power in that mess of bureaucratic incompetence.  _ Suspect’s power was cancelled by Det. Steel. Suspect was apprehended. _ But it was never mentioned in any more detail than a throwaway reference.

Juno also had quite the criminal record for someone who was so adamantly against crime. 39 misdemeanors before age 18, then a long period during his police career without any crimes to his name, then the beginning of his P.I. career and a long list of more serious crimes. It gave Peter hope that Juno could be persuaded to work with him after all. Juno already had several accounts of breaking and entry, assault and battery, and a staggering amount of disturbing the peace.

The third place he checked for information were Juno’s hospital records. There were a disturbing amount of files tied to Juno Steel, but no mentions of Juno’s powers. Still, Peter read them, and did not like what he saw. 

The first visit came after jagged cut on his head that needed stitches at age six from an older kid that threw beer bottles at him and his brother. Sarah Steel handed Juno over to the doctors and went outside to smoke. The doctors noticed fingerprint bruises on his arm, but Juno wouldn’t say how he’d gotten those. 

At age eight, Juno was checked into the hospital for two broken ribs and internal bleeding. A furious Sarah Steel had raged against the cops who had caught her son stealing and decided to teach him a lesson.

Juno was first checked into the hospital for a blaster wound at age 16. He’d been brought in by Benzaiten Steel, Mick Mercury, and someone else who’s name had been redacted. The shot had apparently gone all the way through Juno’s gut, missing any vital organs but risking his life. The doctors noted that while it was the first time he’d been checked into the hospital for such a wound, he had a couple of other blaster scars. 

Peter knew he was reading about injuries that had happened decades ago, but he felt angry anyways. As he flicked through pages and pages of records, skimming the injuries that had accrued over years of poverty and abuse and self-sacrificing and moral outrage, he thought back to the way Juno had stepped in front of Cecil’s spiked fist. Juno had enough scars. Someone could protect him for a change. Maybe Peter could protect him, if given the chance. He made a mental note to come to that thought later.

Peter was about to conclude his search and turn to researching the Martian Pill when he stumbled across a file on Juno Steel that shouldn’t exist, belonging to a corporation called NorthStar. He opened it, only to get hit with half a dozen firewalls. After calling in a favor with a hacker on Saturn, he got access to it a day and a half later. 

It was the information he’d been looking for. 

Powers are rare, and most of the powers that exist are relatively useless. The ability to turn any umbrella inside-out in a ten mile radius. Being able to grow your hair out as much as you want at will. Useful powers were valuable and rarer than snowstorms on Venus. Those who did have them often ended up in powerful, high paid positions to use them. Peter had never heard of a shapeshifter as powerful as him. What research he’d done into his gift had shown that most shifters had a limit on how long they could keep one form, or how much they could change their features away from what they naturally looked like. Peter had no such limitations. It was probable that there was no one like him in the universe. And yet, Peter had heard of other shapeshifters. He’d never heard of another living person who could cancel powers. 

Whenever children are born with powers, those powers are studied. Their development is often followed throughout childhood and depending on the power, different people take interest. Take the infamous supergenius M’Tendere for example; once their mechanical genius had been reported, army recruiters had been coming to their home once an hour at least, until they'd agreed to use their powers to help the war effort. Peter’s powers had never been discovered, of course. Mag had had a vested interest in keeping that trick up his sleeve under wraps. From what Peter could tell, Juno’s power had never been officially reported either, though Northstar seemed to know quite a bit about it. 

As he read Northstar’s files, Peter discovered the most perplexing puzzle piece of all: Juno’s brother had had a power too. Benzaiten Steel: Power Amplification. 

Peter got up to pace the room.

If shapeshifting or power-cancellation were valuable, he couldn’t imagine what the worth of a power like Benzaiten’s would be. Civil wars could start over a power like that. Peter wondered if that was why they hadn’t been reported. He kept reading.

The file seemed to detail the twin’s entire lives. How frequently they used their powers and in what circumstances. What their skills and limitations were. Their psychological profiles. 

The people who had written the report tried to contact Sarah for several years in order to test the children’s powers directly, with no success. She would react aggressively, and often violently, if anyone tried to come near her family without her permission. Sarah Steel had drilled it into her children’s heads that powers were evil and destructive. She had discouraged them from touching anyone, and once she’d realized that Ben touching Juno would heighten his ability and cancel out every ability within a city block, she’d discouraged them from touching each other, too. It was almost as if she kept her children’s powers hidden out of spite more than anything else. Sarah Steel had made a lifestyle out of spite.

It detailed poorly thought out teenage adventures with friends who’d grown up together. It detail time spent in city sewers, shooting bottles and perfecting his aim. It detailed how Juno had learned to supplement the ranged fire of his sharpshooting with the close-combat brawling he’d picked up in bar fights. It detailed Juno’s time in the HCPD and how he’d fared after his brother’s death. It detailed addiction and the slow, painful climb out of it. It detailed depression, suicidal ideation, and trauma. It detailed bad relationships that were usually with someone with powers, and usually with someone who resented having those powers taken away. It detailed heroics and daring escapes and Juno finding ways to use his powers that no one would have expected. 

The documentation had gotten sparser over time, and no new additions had been made in the last five years, but it was exactly what Peter had hoped to find. And yet, it didn’t satisfy his curiosity. Juno didn’t like to look at blood and wore every emotion on his face. He cared about people, even the ones he had to arrest. He acted like a bedraggled cat and complained about everything under the sun, but stayed quiet about the things that actually scared him. Peter realized that those were the sorts of things he’d actually wanted to learn about Juno. The statistics weren’t half as important as the lady himself. But the only way to learn those things about Juno was to experience them himself, assuming Juno didn’t shoot him the moment he saw him.

He looked down and realized that he’d been doodling absently, as he so often did while lost in thought. The doodles had started out as little lines and squiggles, but evolved into flowers. Curled up together on the center of the page were a rose and a dahlia. Peter tucked a thought away for future consideration.

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise, it's another addition to the Superpower au except there's no dialogue or action. I don't normally write like this so it was an experiment. 
> 
> Anyways? How's everyone doing during quarantine? Living your best life? I stayed up till 4 am last night writing 4.5k for a different fic so if I missed any spelling errors or something then you have to give me the benefit of the doubt here
> 
> Comments, Kudos, give me your life savings. The works.


End file.
